by Benji Heywood (@benjiheywood)
Albums are time capsules. A good album becomes a soundtrack to memory. That one crazy tour. The autumn I fell in love. The time a friend died. All these events have corresponding albums. Consider Gorgeous’ fantastic new album, Sapsucker, out now via Sad Cactus Records. When Gorgeous guitarist/vocalist Dana Lipperman sings “You’re my sweet tooth” over the cacophony of drums, guitar, and pitched loops that opens the album, I’m already reminded of my forty-fourth birthday and how instead of a party, I spent the weekend attending social events for my friends’ children. Or the way it smelled at the 7th and Santa Fe Metro stop the night I exited the bus to go start my new job bartending at a local dive.
For the uninitiated, Gorgeous is a two-piece band based in Ridgewood, Queens composed of Lipperman and drummer Judd Anderman. Gorgeous play a brand of warped math rock/chamber pop that’s tough to pin down. What’s clearer is the music’s grip on my memory. Sapsucker has quickly become part of the soundtrack to my early summer.
Sapsucker represents a leap forward for the band, both artistically and musically, from the duo’s 2019 debut, Egg. While both albums feature Anderman’s acrobatic drumming accompanying Lipperman’s whimsical vocals and idiosyncratic guitar playing, there’s a sense of intentionality to Sapsucker’s bold embrace of melody. Where Egg sounds like a band discovering what was possible in real time – to notably joyous results – Sapsucker is an assured statement of what’s next.
We sat down with Gorgeous to discuss the experience of making their ambitious new album, what’s changed, and what’s still inspiring them in a post-pandemic world. (This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.)
photo credit: Michelle LoBianco
Post-Trash: What was the process like of recording Sapsucker?
Dana Lipperman: Sapsucker was pretty different from how we recorded Egg and how we worked on the split (with EIEIEIO). Typically, we write everything together. Maybe one of us will have an idea coming in, but generally, we're sitting down together, which is why our output is so slow.
Judd Anderman: We come up with the small ideas fast. But what takes a long time is piecing them together in ways that we think are compelling and make sense and building them out into full songs.
Dana: We had everything written for our first album Egg and then we went into the studio.
Judd: For Egg, we went to New Paltz and recorded with Kevin McMahon (Pile, Swans, Real Estate) and our friend Mike (DiSanto, who also produced Sapsucker) produced and mixed it. We worked on sounds –
Dana: We made some slight arrangement tweaks in the studio –
Judd: — but the songs didn’t really change.
Dana: For Sapsucker, it was really different. I don't know if we'll ever write a record this way again, but I think it was partly the time, the fact it was COVID. We weren't being very productive in between sessions. And we weren't seeing anybody. That’s when Mike stepped in.
PT: How did you meet Mike?
Judd: We met Mike at a show like back in 2018 or 2019. He was playing drums in Half Human who were really excellent. He started talking to us about recording and mixing and so on. He had a space with nice gear and microphones and stuff and expressed an interest in actually working with us. Then we spent a day in his practice space recording demos and things sounded pretty good. We were happy.
Dana: (During the Egg sessions) we became really close.
Judd: Now he’s one of our best friends.
Dana: So, when COVID hit, we bubbled with him. He’s basically the only other person we saw for an entire year.
PT: What was that like?
Dana: Every weekend we’d go to Mike’s studio. We weren’t taking the subway a lot. We’d hop on a ferry to Red Hook or, like, walk two hours to get to his practice space. It was an ordeal.
PT: Sounds surreal.
Dana: Yeah. We recorded everything live, just the two of us. Then we’d do overdubs. I'd double up guitars and Judd always had some percussion overdubs.
PT: Oh yeah! I wanted to ask about that. What on earth is happening at the end of “Big Hands”?
Judd: I have these metal shakers. They’re sort of like scrap metal, but dull, like baby shakers. We were both playing them and then I’m sure Mike added some crazy plug-in to make them sound even crazier. He’s kind of like our Brian Eno. He's really good at doctoring things up in a way that sounds cool and kind of tickles your ear without being overly conspicuous.
PT: Every weekend with the same three people, did it ever feel claustrophobic?
Judd: We had a great time working with Mike on everything. Even though by the end, it started… I think we were all starting to just burn out on it. Because we were set working so intensely at it for so long in such close proximity without talking to other people at all.
PT: Did anything get abandoned? Or any songs not make it? Because, you're just like, fuck it.
Dana: Yeah. There was one where we just couldn't make it work. We had it recorded. At the time, I don't know, if it was just that we were like, out of energy?
Judd: I think we were out of energy. And, like, we hadn't rehearsed it enough. Because we were just out of energy.
Dana: It just didn't sound good. So, we cut it. But it'll be coming out hopefully on an EP sometime in the future.
Judd: If we get something to even 75% of the way there, it takes us so long to get to that point that we're really reluctant to scrap anything altogether.
Dana: Yeah, even if it gets scrapped, it emerges someday.
PT: Speaking of, you had a song called “Sweet Tooth” on the split with EIEIEIO, but the song that appears on Sapsucker that bookends the album is a different song. What’s going on there?
Dana: The song “Sweet Tooth” was on the split but –
Judd: This one’s basically a different tune.
Dana: We really liked “Sweet Tooth” and wanted to include it on the album. I think it was Mike’s idea to include a different version that wasn’t the original. So, for (Sapsucker opener) “Sweet,” we were just making noise.
Judd: Maybe we were getting levels?
Dana: Yeah, just goofin’ off. But secretly, Mike was recording us. Then “Tooth” at the end of the record is more straightforward.
Judd: I think Mike took some liberties. But I mean, it was a surprise to us. We had the sequence together (of the album) without those bookends. Then Mike added “Sweet” and “Tooth” and we liked it immediately.
PT: What was going to be the last song originally?
Dana: I think maybe “Keep It Steady.” That song was part of an outro of a different song we were writing that was something we scrapped. The whole body of it just wasn't working. It was called “Speed It Up.” We took the outro and we turned it into a whole other song.
PT: What comes first, generally, music or the melody/lyrics.
Dana and Judd: Music.
Judd: We'll at least have an idea of the parts and the overall shape and how we want to transition between things. Then usually we'll work on melody as like sort of counterpoint against the guitar. Then the actual lyrics are usually the very last painful part.
PT: Dana, is it a challenge for you to be playing such syncopated guitar parts, and then also sing a counter rhythm melody on top of that?
Dana: It’s really hard! When we first start writing a song, I write the melodies completely separate – like I'm not playing. I’m just looping guitar or piano on a computer – and then maybe Judd’s got the – what is it?
Judd: Melodica!
Dana: Melodica! He’ll play the melodica. We usually do a lot of that together, totally separate from guitar, and then I have to learn how to sing it and play it. I remember “Metalhead” (from Egg). (To Judd) You were like, there's no way. This is impossible. I was like, I can do it. I would practice singing one note at a time while I was playing until I could do it. Neither of us come from technical musical backgrounds. I don't really know how it all happened that we started writing more complicated music. But it's not like it didn't come naturally. We had the ideas, but we had to learn how to play it. But now I feel like with Sapsucker it was easier, and I think I'm also singing less syncopated parts. I was purposely trying to have it be a little less syncopated, a little more emotional.
PT: Which is why the album is so charming. What would you say are the themes of the record either lyrically or musically, and how perhaps these themes might be different now that you can listen to the record as a whole, versus when you were writing it?
Dana: Good question. I feel like when we start an album cycle, we do try to think about musical elements that we want to have reflected on the album. We’ve actually written them down both times. One big one for Sapsucker was to be more emotional for this album. We felt like for Egg, it didn't feel very personal, very emotional. That was not a bad thing. But being more emotional was something we wanted to achieve on the second album. I think it influenced the instrumentals and the melodies and the lyrics.
Judd: As far as lyrical themes… I think I said this already, but we struggle with lyrics. That's part of the reason we do them last, neither one of us loves writing them. Some of it is about listener interpretation, and that being fluid and sort of, like, out of your control also. At some point, I think that scared us. But it scares us less now. That's probably a good thing, but I think in some ways that weighed on the lyrics we wrote on the first record, which were like kind of sci-fi and like maybe a little dystopian, but mostly, pretty abstract. Like Dana was saying, this time we wanted to do something that felt more personal and emotional.
PT: I think you achieved your goal. During this time, the pandemic, making this album, what did you learn about yourself? This one’s for both of you.
Dana: We learned a lot about each other. We talked about how I can be an anxious person and how COVID made that worse. I’ve had to think a lot more about how I carry myself and cope with that. Working on this album – Mike had us talk a lot about themes in trying to get me to write more, which is an area I’m uncomfortable with. I find it hard to be vulnerable and write about my feelings. Both Judd and Mike pushed me to do that, and that’s where “Elbow Stress Rash” came from, just getting out those feelings; it was really cathartic.
PT: How ‘bout you, Judd?
Judd: Before COVID, I would have said my favorite thing to do is working on writing and recording. Like, if I never played another show again, then, yeah, who cares. But then not playing shows and not hanging out with people and seeing new bands? I realized during the extent of lockdown how important that was to me. I didn't really didn't think I cared about it beforehand.
Dana: I felt like I had the opposite reaction! Where pre-COVID, I loved playing shows. Judd would always be like, I'd be fine if I could only record for the rest of my life. Then I think, being isolated and spending so much time on recording, and being home so much. I realized I'd be okay, not playing, but I did miss it. I missed the community, but I realized I really liked writing and recording, maybe more than I’d thought before. I have a newfound appreciation for it, which before felt like making albums was more of a means to playing the shows.
PT: Tell me the last thing that inspired you.
Judd: Libra by Don DeLillo.
Dana: In general, going to shows, especially at smaller venues and DIY spaces when you can get super close to the bands but don't have to wrestle with jocks and teenage boys, and listening to new music. I was blown away recently by Ovlov/Disco Doom/Youbet at Baby's and Landowner at a show at Alphaville in the last few weeks. I can't stop playing the new En Attendant Ana record and am looking forward to seeing them live at the end of May in Brooklyn.
PT: Judd, are you interested in conspiracy theories in general or more just a DeLillo fan? (editor’s note: Libra is a bio-fictional account of Lee Harvey Oswald’s life before the Kennedy Assassination.)
Judd: Both. I have a general interest in conspiracy theories, the way they've soaked into popular discourse and media narratives. Also, being a bit of a DeLillo fan. I've read a few of his books and liked everything I've read. We went on vacation recently and Libra was my beach reading, and I blazed through it.
PT: Dana, you mentioned that going to shows inspires you. How has the New York scene changed post-COVID? Does it feel different?
Dana: The scene does feel different, at least to me. Obviously, we've also both changed. I feel like the last few years aged us. Maybe part of it feeling different is clouded by that. But there's definitely fewer venues or at least fewer smaller DIY venues that will book local shows. On the other hand, there's tons of new bands. We’ve seen lots of younger kids starting bands, new spaces opening up. There's new life, too.